WEDNESDAY BLOGGING CHALLENGE | BOOKS TO PUT IN A TIME CAPSULE

This week’s challenge prompt is books to include in a time capsule and why. I’m having a bit of trouble with this one. I think because the idea behind a time capsule is to capture a particular point in time and save it for posterity. But we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. So I’m going to put in some books that have helped me deal with the current situation, and explain why.

   

Well, I guess we might as well get our current situation over with. I hate COVID. I hate the way people have reacted to it, pushing back against measures to save people like me. It has soured me on humanity, and made me realize just how little my life matters. It has changed my view of the world, which was already pretty cynical, to downright pessimistic. But it’s what’s happening now, and there’s no point pretending it isn’t. These are two books that have come out of this worldwide event so far, and capture a fairly wide range of experiences and consequences of it.

    

In terrible situations it’s always important to remember that it could be worse. I found Paul Kalanithi’s memoir of his diagnosis with terminal cancer to be a beautiful and oddly life-affirming experience. And it made me look for hope, because if he could find it in his situation, there must be some in mine. Likewise I really enjoyed my re-read of The Martian. It’s just as funny as I remembered, and I loved being in his mind as he works through problems and finds ways to solve them. I wish our current situation is one that could be fixed with a brilliant scientific mind (I mean it is, just too many people don’t listen to science or can’t access the results of that brilliance). There was also a bit of a parallel in that the air outside his mask or the hab wanted to kill him, and that’s kind of how it feels living through COVID. So it wasn’t totally unrelated.

         

Though it’s pretty all-encompassing, COVID isn’t the only thing that defines this moment in history. We’ve also had the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black people and People of Colour, and the worldwide attention that it garnered. We’ve seen a rise in violence and racism towards AAPI people in response to the pandemic. And hundreds of sets of remains of children were found in unmarked graves attached to multiple former residential schools in Canada. All of these situations have re-focused attention on the painful history of how each of these groups have been treated throughout North America’s history, and the effects that history is still having on the lives of BIPOC to this day. I’ve been trying to read and review more books by BIPOC on my blog, and will continue to do so. There is so much to learn, and so many different perspectives and sets of experiences that have been shared through books.

And because it’s important sometimes to just have some fun and a flight of fancy, The House in the Cerulean Sea was a wonderful bright spot in such a crappy time. It’s not perfect, but it was exactly what I needed, and I’m so grateful to everyone who recommended it to me! You guys rock.

Alright, that’s me for the week! What about you guys? Do you agree with any of my picks? Which book (or books) would you put in your own time capsule?

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge is a blog hop hosted every Wednesday by Long and Short Reviews. The weekly prompts range widely, including both book-related and non-book-related topics. The idea is to get bloggers to interact, share a bit about their lives and connect with other bloggers. Click here for the list of upcoming topics, and visit here to join in the fun!